Listener voice identification in foreign and accented English.

Abstract

This study investigates perceptual voice identification by analyzing the quantitative and qualitative acoustical characteristics listeners use to identify voices in non‐native speech. Research on voice identification typically focuses on the direct quantitative comparison of voices to find unique identifiers [e.g., Morrison (2009) and Jessen (2008)]. However, in this study an experiment was run in order to analyze the acoustic cues people perceptually adhere to in identifying voices. Listeners of various native language backgrounds were asked to identify the voices of Mandarin Chinese speakers in both Mandarin and Mandarin‐accented English speech. Listeners’ accuracy and speaker selections in fourteen voice line‐ups (Sullivan and Schlichting 1998) were recorded. Speakers’ productions for all stimuli were analyzed using twelve acoustic features. The results find that though listeners were highly accurate at the voice recognition task, their errors do follow systematic trends. Quantitative and qualitative acoustic measures such as pitch, pitch variation, formant trajectories, intensity, and nasality prove to be reliable in patterning memorable and forgettable voices. That is, this study finds that certain acoustic characteristics are more salient in everyday voice identification.